#METOO AND US POLITICS: ANALYSING THE TWITTER CONVERSATION
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Journal of Liberty and International Affairs | Volume 7 · Number 3 · 2021 | eISSN 1857-9760
Published online by the Institute for Research and European Studies at www.e-jlia.com
Copyright © 2021 The Author/s
This work is licensed under a CC-BY 3.0 License
Peer review method: Double-Blind
Accepted: August 16, 2021
Published: September 21, 2021
Original scientific article
DOI: https://doi.org/10.47305/JLIA2137033b
#METOO AND US POLITICS:
ANALYSING THE TWITTER CONVERSATION
Vittoria Bernardini
Sapienza University of Rome, Italy
ORCID iD: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7976-1368
vittoria.bernardini@uniroma1.it
Abstract: The #MeToo movement has had a profound cultural impact on US society, and notably on US party politics. While many
studies have addressed the #MeToo-related controversy arising from the Brett Kavanaugh nomination to Supreme Court Justice
in 2018, the relationship between #MeToo and US politics before this event has remained understudied. This article, therefore,
addresses this gap by looking at the role of politics at the beginning of the #MeToo movement. Focusing on the first six months
of online activity on Twitter (October 2017 – April 2018), over 2 million tweets with the #MeToo hashtag are analyzed to identify
the main activity patterns across the dataset and to gain insight on user behavior and participation in the conversation. Results
point to the weaponization of #MeToo in the political context from its inception. It is suggested that #MeToo reflects the
polarized political climate in the US and that it can be conceptualized as part of the wider ―culture wars‖ (Hunter 1991) that
characterize the public debate.
Keywords: #MeToo; US Politics; Political Polarization; Donald Trump; Twitter
INTRODUCTION
#MeToo emerged in 2017 as a movement to combat sexual violence, and the
hashtag quickly gained immense popularity on social media. Participation in the hashtag
campaign has been described as ―nothing short of phenomenal‖ and turned #MeToo
into a ―moment of reckoning‖ for sexual violence (Fileborn and Loney-Howes 2019, 3).
The movement became internationally prominent, as numerous versions of the hashtag
were developed for different national contexts and languages. Despite its global
popularity, however, data seems to show that the movement remained dominated by
US personalities and themes. For example, studies have indicated that peaks in social
media activity and the news corresponded to events related to American personalities
from show business or politics (Anderson and Toor 2018; De Benedictis et al. 2019).
Additionally, in the same period, 71% of all tweets were written in English (Anderson and
Toor 2018). Given the relevance of US culture to the movement, then, one aspect that
33Journal of Liberty and International Affairs | Volume 7 · Number 3 · 2021 | eISSN 1857-9760
Published online by the Institute for Research and European Studies at www.e-jlia.com
has remained understudied is the relationship between #MeToo and US politics. The
#MeToo conversation that began in 2017 proved immediately influential on US politics,
as 44% of members of Congress addressed the issue of sexual misconduct in their
Facebook posts between October and December 2017 (Lam et al. 2018). The centrality
of #MeToo in US politics became undeniable in 2018 when President Trump nominated
Judge Brett Kavanaugh for the position of Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the
United States. Following the nomination, psychology professor Dr. Christine Blasey-Ford
publicly accused Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her at a party when they were in high
school, leading to a heated debate in the public sphere. This #MeToo-related
controversy is perhaps the most revealing example of a central tension in US politics. On
the one hand, the popularity of the #MeToo movement is part of a wider revival of
feminist politics and anti-sexual violence activism. On the other hand, it has also been
suggested that the election of Trump and Kavanaugh‘s confirmation are ―indicative of a
backlash against women‘s rights - a statement against identity politics and so-called
political correctness - and that for all the attention #MeToo received, a counterattack
was simultaneously being mounted by conservatives‖ (Rosewarne 2019, 174).
The purpose of this article, then, is to investigate this tension by analyzing the
relationship between the #MeToo movement and US party politics. Most existing
studies on #MeToo have rather focused on aspects regarding its visibility in the media
and the role of digital activism (e.g., Boyle 2019; Clark-Parsons 2019; De Benedictis et al.
2019; Fileborn and Loney-Howes 2019; Zacchia et al. 2019). Two notable exceptions
(Boyle and Rathnayake 2019; Pollino 2020) have focused on the Kavanaugh case as the
most salient political controversy related to #MeToo. Building on the work of these
authors, who show how #MeToo was weaponized in the politically polarized climate in
the US, this article looks at the role of politics at the beginning of the #MeToo
movement, focusing on the first six months of online activity on Twitter (October 2017 –
April 2018). Through the analysis of over 2 million tweets with the #MeToo hashtag, this
study aims to explore how the political weaponization of #MeToo appeared in the
public debate long before the Kavanaugh case emerged in summer 2018.
#METOO AND THE US POLITICAL CONTEXT
The emergence of the #MeToo movement has been linked by many authors to
the wider context of the Trump presidency (Banet-Weiser 2018; Rosewarne 2019;
Rottenberg 2019). After Trump‘s election in 2016, many protests took place in the US
and across the globe against his campaign rhetoric and his actions while in office.
Protesters opposed Trump's anti-progressive values on issues such as gender equality,
reproductive rights, and immigration (Fisher, Dow, and Ray 2017). In 2016, the
Washington Post published a leaked audiotape of Trump making ―extremely lewd‖
comments about women (Fahrenthold 2016).
34Journal of Liberty and International Affairs | Volume 7 · Number 3 · 2021 | eISSN 1857-9760
Published online by the Institute for Research and European Studies at www.e-jlia.com
The tape received ―universal condemnation‖ from all political factions and
represented the first time that ―a presidential candidate‘s own words expressed such
graphic, lewd, and abusive language about women‖ (Rhodes et al. 2020, 2). In response
to the content of the tape, thousands of women began using the hashtag #NotOkay to
share narratives of sexual assault and to proclaim that Trump‘s comments should not be
minimized (Maas et al. 2018).
The most notable protest took place offline when more than two million people
participated in the Women's March on 21 January 2017 (the day after Trump's
inauguration), one of the largest protests ever observed in the United States (Fisher,
Dow, and Ray 2017). The main demonstration took place in Washington, DC, while
hundreds of other events were organized across the United States and internationally.
This resurgence of feminist activism to contrast the election of a misogynist
president reflects a tension between what Banet-Weiser (2018) has named ―popular
feminism‖ and ―popular misogyny‖. The term ―popular feminism‖ refers to a revival of
feminist ideas and activism that is especially ―tied to media visibility, circulation, and
affective embrace‖ (Banet-Weiser et al. 2020, 4), particularly on social media platforms.
In contrast, ―popular misogyny‖ refers both to the ―social, political, economic, and
cultural structure‖ of patriarchal societies (Banet-Weiser 2018, 17) and to the more
recent ―reaction to the culture-wide circulation and embrace of feminism‖ (Banet-Weiser
2018, 3). As Löffler, Luyt, and Starck (2020, 1) note, sexism, and misogyny are ―newly
emerging versions of right-wing populism: (...) they oppose feminism and gender-
equality measures, same-sex marriage, and gender studies; they seek to re-instantiate
traditional family and associated gender roles, and they pursue a strong-man style of
political leadership‖. The revitalization of populist and conservative politics across
Western countries has contributed to invigorating sexist ideas and policies (Rottenberg
2019). In this sense, the revival of feminist protests since the 2010s can also be
understood as a backlash against the newfound institutional legitimization of
conservative views on gender. This is the context where the #MeToo movement
originated. The use of the hashtag #MeToo first began in October 2017, following a
story in the New York Times uncovering sexual assault allegations against Hollywood
producer Harvey Weinstein (Kantor and Twohey 2017). Amid the controversy that
ensued, actress Alyssa Milano tweeted:
Me Too.
Suggested by a friend: ―If all the women who have been sexually harassed or
assaulted wrote ‗Me Too‘ as a status, we might give people a sense of the
magnitude of the problem‖ (@AlyssaMilano, 15 October 2017).
The hashtag proved immensely popular; it is estimated that it was used over 85
million times across social media in the first 45 days, covering 85 countries around the
world (Sayej 2017). By September 2018, almost one year after the initial tweet, #MeToo
35Journal of Liberty and International Affairs | Volume 7 · Number 3 · 2021 | eISSN 1857-9760
Published online by the Institute for Research and European Studies at www.e-jlia.com
had appeared in more than 19 million posts on Twitter, averaging 55,319 uses of the
hashtag per day (Anderson and Toor 2018). This extremely high level of online activity,
therefore, offers ample opportunity to research the topics discussed in the #MeToo
conversation, as detailed in the next section.
METHODOLOGY
This article examines the relevance of US politics in the first six months of the
#MeToo movement on Twitter. Twitter is chosen as the research site because it is widely
used in the public arena. Given that the majority of posts and interactions are publicly
accessible, users often focus on issues that are also public and political (Papacharissi and
de Fatima Oliveira 2012). By conceiving of Twitter as a digital public sphere, then, the
platform offers the best space to understand the political aspects of the #MeToo
conversation. The dataset for the study was provided by the ‗Minerva‘ project, co-
financed by the Foundation for European Progressive Studies and the Economia Civile
association (see Zacchia et al. 2019). The dataset contains 2,015,900 public Twitter posts
generated between October 2017 and April 2018 containing the #MeToo hashtag and
other local versions of the hashtag.1 The vast majority of tweets are in English (78.6%);
other significant languages include French (5.4%), German (2.5%), and Spanish (2%). The
data and metadata available for all tweets were analyzed to identify the main
communicative patterns in the six months of the #MeToo conversation. Using SPSS and
Excel as the principal software for quantitative analysis, the entire dataset was analyzed
to obtain key metrics on the following dimensions: user activity, retweets, and hashtags.
The overall objective is to identify the main activity patterns across the dataset and to
gain insight into user behavior and participation in the conversation (Bruns and Stieglitz
2012; Bruns 2018).
RESULTS
The first dimension analyzed is user activity. The total number of unique users in
the dataset is 830,942. This means that each user produced on average 2.42 tweets, with
the top 10 most active users authoring around 1.4% of all tweets in the dataset. User
mentions constitute an especially useful and metric to better understand the roles
different users assume in the dataset: ―Users who receive many @mentions, but rarely
@reply in return must be seen mainly as subjects of conversation; users who both
receive and send @replies frequently, by contrast, are active subjects within
conversation‖ (Bruns and Stieglitz 2014, 73). 20.4% of tweets in the dataset contain one
1
94% of the posts contain the hashtag #MeToo; the other hashtags are #balancetonporc (France), #120db (Germany),
#yotambien (Spain and Latin America), #sistabriefen (Sweden) and #quellavoltache (Italy).
36Journal of Liberty and International Affairs | Volume 7 · Number 3 · 2021 | eISSN 1857-9760
Published online by the Institute for Research and European Studies at www.e-jlia.com
or more user mentions; 69% of tweets have only one mention while the remaining 31%
include between 2 and 60 mentions. Table 1 compares the top 20 users who received
the most mentions with the number of #MeToo tweets they posted, to understand the
ratio of ‗subjects of conversation‘ vs. active participation.
2
Table 1: Top 20 Most Mentioned Users vs. the Number of #MeToo Tweets They Posted
(Source: Authors‘ depiction)
User % of Total Mentions #MeToo Type of User
Posts
1 youtube 3.9 0 Digital platform
3
2 realdonaldtrump / potus 3.3 0 Political actor
3 time 1.3 71 News outlet
4 oprah 1.3 0 Celebrity
5 alyssa_milano 1 134 Celebrity
6 taranaburke 1 56 Political actor
7 tonyrobbins 1 0 Celebrity
8 nytimes 0.9 74 News outlet
4
9 alfranken / senfranken 0.7 1 Political actor
10 rosemcgowan 0.7 18 Celebrity
11 cnn 0.6 82 News outlet
12 gop 0.6 0 Political organization
13 hillaryclinton 0.4 0 Political actor
14 sengillibrand 0.4 9 Political actor
15 jimmykimmel 0.3 0 Celebrity
16 thedailybeast 0.3 153 News outlet
17 foxnews 0.3 41 News outlet
18 womensmarch 0.3 18 Political organization
19 asiaargento 0.3 75 Celebrity
20 kesharose 0.3 0 Celebrity
2
Indication based only on the first mention in the tweet, not all mentions in all tweets. The variable mention1 includes
411,701 users. Given that two individuals in the top 20 mentions have two accounts (Donald Trump's
@realdonaldtrump and @potus; Al Franken's @alfranken and @senfranken), data for the respective accounts are
added up and counted as one.
3
@realdonaldtrump is mentioned 11,292 times (2.7%) and @potus 2,458 times (0.6%).
4
@alfranken is mentioned 1,519 times (0.4%) and @senfranken 1,406 (0.3%). The #MeToo tweet was posted by
@senfranken.
37Journal of Liberty and International Affairs | Volume 7 · Number 3 · 2021 | eISSN 1857-9760
Published online by the Institute for Research and European Studies at www.e-jlia.com
The data in Table 1 reveal some interesting insights into the users who are at the
center of the conversation, showing a combination of Hollywood individuals, media
outlets reporting on #MeToo, and political figures. Except for actress Asia Argento, all
users are US-based individuals or organizations. The first most mentioned account is
@YouTube; this is simply because, when sharing a video from Youtube to Twitter, the
mention is automatically included in the tweet.
Several US politicians appear prominently, with President Trump being the most
discussed individual in the conversation. Another political controversy emerges with the
presence of Al Franken, a Minnesota Senator who resigned after being accused of sexual
misconduct, and Kirsten Gillibrand, the so-called ―#MeToo senator‖ (Siddiqui 2019) who
was especially outspoken against Franken.
As expected, the role of mainstream media is also prominent. Time Magazine and
the New York Times are the two most mentioned news outlets, given their significance
in propelling and publicizing #MeToo stories. The role of show business in inciting
conversation is evident, as the list includes some of the actresses and television hosts
who most vocally spoke out about #MeToo.
It is also observable how, as Bruns and Stieglitz (2013) suggest, some actors are
only part of the debate as topics of conversation but do not take on an active role. This
is most evident in the case of Donald Trump, who is the individual most often
mentioned in the whole dataset but who has never tweeted using #MeToo or related
hashtags. The centrality of well-known individuals and organizations in the #MeToo
conversation is also confirmed by looking at the 100 users who received the most
mentions (Figure 1). The chart mostly reflects the same trends as the top 20 most
mentioned users, with the addition of a slightly larger role for digital platforms (such as
social networking sites, Netflix, and Amazon) and journalists and writers. Significantly,
neither Twitter influencers nor ‗common‘ users appear among the top mentions; while
common users contributed to a vast majority of the tweets in the dataset, their influence
was not sufficient to overshadow the fame of figures from entertainment, politics, and
the media. This confirms the argument by Poell and Van Dijck (2016, 230) who underline
how social media tend to follow a similar logic to traditional mass media in enhancing
―the visibility of particular actors and topics‖. Metrics on mentions are especially
revealing of the centrality of US politics in #MeToo. Among the top 100 mentioned
users, the highest share of mentions refers to the category of political actors or
organizations (30%, Figure 1), calling 25 unique users into the discussion. Among these,
8 are Republican politicians or groups, while 10 are Democrats.5
5
The remaining 7 are organizations or individuals that are not politically affiliated with either party.
38Journal of Liberty and International Affairs | Volume 7 · Number 3 · 2021 | eISSN 1857-9760
Published online by the Institute for Research and European Studies at www.e-jlia.com
5, 5% 2, 2%
5, 5%
News outlet
39, 39% Political actor
22, 22%
Celebrity
Digital platform
News personality
27, 27% Commercial actor
Figure 1: Type of User for the 100 Most Mentioned Users (Source: Authors‘ depiction)
Retweets are the second dimension analyzed. They are a useful metric to
understand the role of posts and users in the conversation. Bruns et al. (2016) consider
retweeting as one of the key elements to analyze user engagement in hashtag publics.
Overall, in the dataset, 77.3% of tweets have 0 retweets and 20.2% of tweets have
between 1 and 10 retweets. Only 0.3% of posts have more than 100 retweets and 0.03%
have more than 1,000 retweets. Although these percentages are quite low, looking at
retweets can still provide some further insights into the conversation. Table 2 shows the
20 posts with the highest number of retweets in the dataset. The range of users who
authored the most popular posts appears quite varied in comparison with the top
mentioned users (see Table 1).
39Journal of Liberty and International Affairs | Volume 7 · Number 3 · 2021 | eISSN 1857-9760
Published online by the Institute for Research and European Studies at www.e-jlia.com
Table 2: Most Retweeted Tweets in the Dataset (Source: Authors‘ depiction)
User Retweets Type of User Tweet
1 apbenven 55,406 News A reminder that if a woman didn't post #MeToo, it
personality doesn't mean she wasn't sexually assaulted or
harassed. Survivors don't owe you their story.
2 funder 46,371 News The 16 women who accused Trump of sexual assault
personality are telling their story in one video-please share this far
and wide. RT if you agree it‘s time for Trump to be
held accountable for his sexual misconduct.
#TrumpSexProbe #AMJoy #MeToo
pic.twitter.com/hNIqZEI54G
3 funder 39,128 News @SpeakerRyan - Everyone who retweets this wants
personality you to open up an investigation into the 20 sexual
assault claims against Donald Trump. Quit being silent
on the issue. Is your ―fight against sexual misconduct‖
a complete fraud? It is if you don‘t probe Trump.
#TrumpSexProbe #MeToo
4 womensmarch 31,924 Political To all the women sharing stories of sexual assault and
organization sexual harassment, thank you for your bravery to
speak up. You are not alone. #MeToo
5 McKaylaMaroney 30,370 Celebrity #MeToo pic.twitter.com/lYXaDTuOsS
6 LeeannTweeden 25,457 Celebrity I‘ve decided it‘s time to tell my story. #MeToo,
http://www.kabc.com/2017/11/16/lee ann-tweeden-
on-senator-al-franken/ …
7 BetteMidler 23,166 Celebrity Tomorrow is my birthday. I feel like this video was a
gift from the universe to me. Geraldo may have
apologized for his tweets supporting Matt Lauer, but
he has yet to apologize for this. #MeToo
pic.twitter.com/TkcolFWfA2
8 Simone_Biles 23,010 Celebrity Feelings... #MeToo pic.twitter.com/ICiu0FCa0n
9 Pappiness 21,281 News Men, Don't say you have a mother, a sister, a
personality daughter... Say you have a father, a brother, a son who
can do better. We all can. #MeToo
10 celia_yac 21,000 Individual #balancetonporc Un homme marchait derrière moi,
m‘amit la main entre les jambes 2 fois et m‘asorti
«çavousplait ?» j‘aiportéplainte:
pic.twitter.com/JWpHK6DTps
11 cnnbrk 18,982 News outlet When I raise my hand, I am aware of all the women
who are still in silence. - Actress Viola Davis references
the #MeToo movement during the Women's March in
Los Angeles, http://cnn.it/2mUGcQb
pic.twitter.com/xPb5vvA4BL
12 GraceStarling4 16,452 Individual For those carrying their #MeToo with them silently,
you are loved, cherished, and believed. You do not
owe your story to anyone.
13 itsgabrielleu 16,195 Celebrity You know us. We are your family members. Your
friends. Your co-workers. Your neighbors. And yes,
even your heroes. We are everywhere. #Metoo, http://
twitter.com/SInow/status/9 20625777477144576 …
14 Alyssa_Milano 15,462 Celebrity At the very same time that we are asking Franken to
resign from the senate -- we are allowing an accused
child molester to run for senate. At the very same time
40Journal of Liberty and International Affairs | Volume 7 · Number 3 · 2021 | eISSN 1857-9760
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that Silence Breakers is the #TimePersonOfTheYear --
a self-professed pussy grabber was runner-up.
#MeToo
15 goldengateblond 14,522 Twitter Here‘s @Oprah ‘s entire speech. Watch it. If you‘ve
influencer already seen it, watch it again. #MeToo #TimesUp
pic.twitter.com/cAcVJreRzf
16 MarleeMatlin 13,545 Celebrity #MeToo. I was 14, he was 36. I may be Deaf, but
silence is the last thing you will ever hear from me.
pic.twitter.com/hLmBJ7PgmK
17 benshapiro 12,843 News Just reported @Rosie for targeted harassment, mainly
personality to see if Twitter does indeed have a double standard.
Everyone knows if Rosie were conservative, Twitter
would suspend her in a hot second. So, Twitter, put
your money where your mouth is. #MeToo
18 nowthisnews 12,808 News outlet Life coach Tony Robbins says women are using
#MeToo to make themselves 'significant' — but this
brave sexual abuse survivor called him out
pic.twitter.com/wYxhlmc10u
19 meliegodart 12,173 Individual Quandtulis les tweets sur #balancetonporc ... tute rend
compte que... pic.twitter.com/On7HkGWTjz
20 funder 11,675 News Over 100 members of Congress (and counting) are
personality now demanding an investigation into the 19 sexual
assault allegations against Trump. RT if you agree
Trump‘s sex crimes should be investigated
immediately. #TrumpSexProbe #MeToo
The role of journalists is more prominent in these highly retweeted tweets as six
out of 20 are posted by news personalities. It is noticeable that, although users
categorized as political do not appear (except for @womensmarch), seven out of 20
tweets are explicitly political in their content. Democratic writer and podcaster Scott
Dworkin (@funder) is the author of three of the most retweeted tweets, which all
constitute a direct attack on Trump. Similarly, right-wing commentator Ben Shapiro
(@benshapiro) draws attention to a perceived double standard in silencing conservative
users. Two more tweets (from @LeeannTweeden and @Alyssa_Milano) address the
accusations of sexual assault against Democratic Senator Al Franken. Finally, two tweets
(from @womensmarch and @cnnbrk) are related to the Women‘s March that took place
in Los Angeles. Other categories of users include female celebrities, either disclosing
their own #MeToo stories or commenting on the #MeToo movement. Unlike the most
mentioned users, authors of top retweeted posts also include several Twitter influencers
and common users. It is interesting to note that there is little overlap between the list of
most mentioned users (Table 1) and the authors of top retweeted posts. As previously
suggested, mentioned users are the subject of the conversation but do not contribute
actively, while the most retweeted users are influential in spreading their messages, but
do not personally become central to the conversation. The final dimension analyzed is
the role of hashtags. In addition to the hashtags that were used as criteria to select
tweets for the construction of the dataset, Table 3 also shows the hashtags that users
41Journal of Liberty and International Affairs | Volume 7 · Number 3 · 2021 | eISSN 1857-9760
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most often employed to discuss a variety of salient topics throughout the conversation.
The hashtags that were used to collect the dataset inevitably appear most consistently;
#MeToo is largely the most used hashtag, in addition to #balancetonporc, #120db, and
#quellavoltache. Hashtags also offer commentary on real-time events; in the sample,
these include two political demonstrations in the US: #marchforourlives (a
demonstration against gun violence held in March 2018 in Washington, D.C.), and
#womensmarch2018/#womensmarch (2018 edition of the Women's March).
Correspondingly, many hashtags focus on national politics. The majority refer to
US politics, showing again a polarized approach especially around the figure of Donald
Trump in connection with #MeToo. US political hashtags include #maga (short for
―Make America Great Again‖, a slogan used by Trump supporters), #trump, #resist, and
#theresistance (hashtags used by anti-Trump protesters). A smaller percent of hashtags
focus on other national contexts, namely #abusefreeindia and #svpol (Swedish politics).
Other types of hashtags include #TimesUp, often used in conjunction with
#MeToo. Many hashtags comment on television programming or show business events,
such as #am2dm, #goldenglobes, #oscars, #grammys, and #oprah. Finally, many
hashtags discuss some of the most prominent men accused of sexual violence and
harassment.
Table 3: Most Used Hashtags in the Dataset (Source: Authors‘ depiction)
Hashtag %
1 #metoo 72.6
2 #balancetonporc 4.1
3 #120db 1
4 #timesup 0.8
5 #am2dm 0.5
6 #quellavoltache 0.3
7 #goldenglobes 0.2
8 #oscars 0.2
9 #abusefreeindia 0.2
10 #maga 0.1
11 #marchforourlives 0.1
12 #resist 0.1
13 #trump 0.1
14 #sexualharassment 0.1
15 #hollywood 0.1
16 #weinstein 0.1
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17 #women 0.1
18 #harveyweinstein 0.1
19 #womensmarch2018 0.1
20 #theresistance 0.1
21 #grammys 0.1
22 #oprah 0.1
23 #feminism 0.1
24 #womensmarch 0.1
25 #svpol 0.1
26 #resistance 0.1
27 #sexualassault 0.1
28 #billcosby 0.1
29 #azizansari 0.1
30 #internationalwomensday 0.1
CONCLUSION
The presence of US politics appears consistently across all dimensions of the
#MeToo conversation. The top mentioned users (Table 1) and top retweeted posts
(Table 2) - which represent the users and posts that received the most attention – show
the centrality of US political figures and organizations in the debate, with partisan
hostility at times overshadowing the initial #MeToo objective of combating sexual
violence. This prevalence of US-centric politics in the conversation risks weakening the
transnational nature of the movement since the unequal distribution of online attention
hinders the global commonality of women's experiences of violence.
These metrics confirm the initial hypothesis that #MeToo has become a
polarizing issue in US partisan politics and that it was often weaponized by rival political
factions. As previously introduced, protests against President Trump provided fertile
ground for the escalation of #MeToo, and indeed he appears to be a central figure in
the discussion, with 4.4% of all tweets in the dataset mentioning him.6 This mirrors the
findings from studies that explored a later period of activity - the Kavanaugh
controversy in 2018 (Boyle and Rathnayake 2019; Pollino 2020). Consequently, it can be
said that the #MeToo conversation reflects the ―highly polarized political climate in the
USA‖ (Boyle and Rathnayake 2019, 1). Siding ‗with‘ or ‗against‘ #MeToo quickly became
the source of division in the same manner as other social issues that characterize
American ―culture wars‖ (Hunter 1991), such as abortion, LGBTQ+ rights, and climate
6
This figure includes mentions for @realdonaldtrump and @potus (see Table 1), and search results for the word
‗Trump‘ in the posts.
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change. Opinions on these matters often run alongside conservative/liberal
denominations, and they are so steeped in competing for moral visions that opposite
views are often irreconcilable. These controversial issues, then, generate ―political and
social hostility rooted in different systems of moral understanding‖ in the American
public debate (Hunter 1991, 42).
As a result, issues that are social become shorthand for political affiliation. In this
sense, it is arguable that #MeToo was in many instances used for political ends that
were partially removed from the original intent of combating sexual violence. For
example, three out of the top 20 retweeted posts are by Democratic writer and
podcaster Scott Dworkin (@funder), and they all call for an investigation into the sexual
assault allegations against Donald Trump. In this instance, liberals are using the
increased intolerance for sexual misconduct and capitalizing on the #MeToo momentum
to mobilize against the president. A more complex picture of the implications of
#MeToo for oppositional party politics emerges in this tweet by Alyssa Milano from
Table 2, which received 15,462 retweets:
At the very same time that we are asking Franken to resign from the senate -- we
are allowing an accused child molester to run for senate.
At the very same time that ‗Silence Breakers‘ is the #TimePersonOfTheYear -- a
self-professed pussy grabber was runner-up.
#MeToo (@Alyssa_Milano Dec 6, 2017)
In the first half of the tweet, Milano expresses her support for the calls for
Democratic Senator Al Franken to resign following allegations of sexual improprieties. At
the same time, she points to the contradiction of another accused sexual predator
running for Senate, Republican Roy Moore, who had received Trump's endorsement two
days before this tweet. In the second half of the tweet, another parallel is drawn
between the cultural impact of #MeToo – exemplified by the Time magazine cover –
and, again, the unsuitability of having an accused sexual predator as president. This
position well encapsulates the tension of the co-existence of ―popular feminism‖ and
―popular misogyny‖ described by Banet-Weiser (2018).
The present dataset only covers the #MeToo conversation until April 2018; as
previously mentioned, this political polarization was further exacerbated in September-
October 2018, when Judge Brett Kavanaugh was nominated and then confirmed as a
Supreme Court Justice despite accusations of sexual assault. In their analysis of the
Kavanaugh controversy on Twitter, Dejmanee et al. (2020, 3956) confirm ―Banet-Weiser‘s
(2018) notion that popular feminism and popular misogyny are structurally linked and
emerge through the same cultural and technical mechanisms, particularly about the
attention economy and social media platforms‖.
The same polarization of attitudes was also present in Donald Trump's own
words on the Kavanaugh controversy, as he declared that "It's a very scary time for
44Journal of Liberty and International Affairs | Volume 7 · Number 3 · 2021 | eISSN 1857-9760
Published online by the Institute for Research and European Studies at www.e-jlia.com
young men in America when you can be guilty of something you might not be guilty of‖
(Hutzler 2018). When asked he had a message for young women, he responded by
stating that "women are doing great".
The conversation around #MeToo can therefore be conceptualized as ―culture
war discourse‖ since it aims to be ―rhetorical and polemical, designed to dramatize
perceptions of conflict and division for political gain‖ (Davis 2019, 4). As demonstrated
by the results of this study, such discourse has permeated the #MeToo conversation
since its beginning, reflecting the increasing polarizing tendencies in the US political
debate.
45Journal of Liberty and International Affairs | Volume 7 · Number 3 · 2021 | eISSN 1857-9760
Published online by the Institute for Research and European Studies at www.e-jlia.com
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to thank Prof. Marcella Corsi and Prof. Giulia Zacchia of Minerva Lab at
Sapienza University of Rome for providing the dataset for this research.
46Journal of Liberty and International Affairs | Volume 7 · Number 3 · 2021 | eISSN 1857-9760
Published online by the Institute for Research and European Studies at www.e-jlia.com
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